Unruly actors: Latvian women of the Red Army in post-war historical memory

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 987-1007
Author(s):  
Daina Eglitis ◽  
Vita Zelče
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Women Volunteers ◽  
Post War ◽  
Historical Accounts

This work highlights the case of Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army who worked and fought on the eastern fronts of World War II. An estimated 70,000–85,000 Latvians served in the Red Army, some as conscripts, others as volunteers. At least several hundred of those who volunteered were women. How are Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army represented and remembered in Soviet and post-Soviet historical accounts of World War II? Why have they not been remembered in most historical accounts of this period? How are ethnicity, gender, and associated social roles implicated in their historical marginality? These questions are situated in the context of literature on collective memory and microsociological literature on social roles, and used to develop the analytical concept of the unruly actor – historical actors who are challenges to dominant memory narratives because they fail to conform to normative social roles ascribed on the basis of, among others, gender and ethnicity. We use the case of Latvian women volunteers to articulate the argument that the marginality of some groups in dominant historical narratives can be understood in terms of their disruption of the historical “scene”, which is configured to reflect a desired social order.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

Powroty do Juliana Hochfelda

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-41
Author(s):  
Mirosław Chałubiński
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Political Sociology ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Post War

The aim of the article is to recall and present the political and intellectual figure of J. Hochfeld (1911–1966) against the background of the contemporary – often ahistorical – attempts to reconstruct historical memory in Poland, totally condemning the period of the Polish People’s Republic. My objective is to use the example of J. Hochfeld to demonstrate the complexity of lives and choices of those who as the members of the non-communist left were active in the interwar period, during World War II and the Polish People’s Republic. This article also presents Hochfeld’s theoretical organizational contribution to the development of the Polish post-war sociology, as well as topicality of the issues he tackled, e.g. political sociology, the contemporaneity of the idea of historical materialism and social-democratic socialism.

An Unlikely Refuge: Latvia’s Women Volunteers in the Red Army in World War II

2020 ◽  
pp. 088832541989012
Author(s):  
Daina S. Eglitis ◽  
Vita Zelče
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
World War ◽  
Socialist Republic ◽  
Soviet Socialist Republic ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women Volunteers ◽  
Women In War ◽  
Warm Clothing

This article examines women’s wartime experiences with a focus on Latvia’s women volunteers in the Red Army in World War II. An estimated 8 percent of the Red Army was composed of women, who played a wide array of roles, including as snipers, combat engineers, medics, and frontline journalists. This level of female participation was unique in World War II, but a close examination of the phenomenon shows that motives and means for entry into the Red Army at the beginning of the war were not uniform. Our examination of the case of women volunteers from the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic reveals key factors that fed women’s fervent desire to “get to the front.” It shows particular ways in which the Red Army functioned as an unlikely refuge, sheltering women from some of the hardships and threats of life in the Soviet Russian interior, including hunger, loneliness, and a lack of warm clothing, while providing a means of exacting revenge against a mortal enemy. At the same time, it exposed women to extremes of violence and conflict. Dominant Soviet narratives of women in war have presented them in largely marginal roles or have silenced stories that failed to comport with triumphalist and masculine representations of World War II. This work uses the voices of women volunteers in the Latvian Riflemen’s Divisions of the Red Army to construct an agent-centered history of motives, experiences, and memories.

History, Myth, and Memory: A Biography of a Stalin Portrait

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Susan Corbesero
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Soviet Leader ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

AbstractDuring the troublous post-war and post-Soviet periods, the iconography of Stalin has served as a powerful interpreter of the past. Since World War II, portraits and attendant mass reproductions of the notorious Soviet leader have conveyed a historical memory that fused the triumphalist mythology of the Second World War and the cult of Stalin. Appropriated for political, national, nostalgic and commercial purposes, these iconic vehicles have functioned as integral “vectors of memory” in times of political change. In that vein, this article traces the remarkably dynamic and influential life of Aleksandr Laktionov's Portrait of I. V. Stalin (1949) in order to illuminate how its meaning and use, past and present, reflects and refracts the political landscape that deploys it.

The of Hunger: Post-war Beckett and the Genealogies of Starvation

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-275
Author(s):  
Alys Moody
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
French History ◽  
World War ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One

Hunger is a pervasive trope in Beckett's major works of the post-war period. This article examines the possibilities for situating this trope historically. It seeks to mediate between the tendency of hunger to resist contextual markers, and the competing historical narratives of Irish and French history – the Famine and hunger strikes on the one hand, and World War II rationing and food shortages on the other – that predispose us to read hunger as a point of engagement with history and nation.

scholarly journals The World War II and its falsification in the Russian youth representations

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-322
Author(s):  
E. G. Ponomareva
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Special Role ◽  
World War ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
State Institute ◽  
The World ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Analytical Centers

The events of the World War II play a special role in the contemporary social discourse as the basis of collective memory and civil culture. The current attempts of some Western countries to misrepresent and rewrite the history of the World War II and to belittle the role of the Red Army in the rout of Nazism pursue serious geopolitical goals. Effective opposition to the falsification of history depends on the quality of youths knowledge about that period (active historical memory) and the younger generations emotional association with the war winner. The article presents the results of the sociological study conducted on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory. First, there was a survey at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (students aged 18-23) to identify the level of historical knowledge and assessments, sources (fiction and movies) of representations, ideas about reasons for the falsification of the World War II history and measures to oppose it. The questions were divided into three groups: historical (the level of basic knowledge), cultural-pedagogic, or emotional (questions about books and movies) and evaluative-predictive (reasons for the falsification of history and measures to oppose it). The study also aimed at comparing the results of the survey with all-Russian opinion polls and foreign surveys. Second, the author analyzed estimates of the reasons for the falsification of the war history and suggestions to oppose this negative trend, which were provided by leading experts from Russian and foreign universities and analytical centers. The comparison of the students and experienced researchers opinions revealed both similarities and differences in generational estimates, and allowed to identify some general ways to resist the intensified trend of the falsification of the war history.

scholarly journals MILITARY COMMEMORATIVE PRACTICES AS A COMPONENT OF THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE ABOUT SECOND WORLD WAR

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-180
Author(s):  
І. Ковальська-Павелко
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
National Level ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Space ◽  
Places Of Memory ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Post War

The analysis shows that military commemorative practices, as a component of the historical memory of the Ukrainian people of World War II, are sufficiently diverse and mainly aimed at uniting society around key issues of state formation. It is established that the essential feature of commemoration is the creation of shared memories through the elaboration of rituals of perpetuation (worship, celebration, etc.) of certain persons and events, the construction of “places of memory” (P. Nora). Commemoration, which is defined as the purposeful process of preserving the memory of events significant to the nation, is realized through commemorative practices – a set of ways that contribute to the consolidation, preservation and transfer in society of its historical past. The most common commemoration practices are the erection of monuments, the creation of museums and memorials, commemorations at national and local levels, commemoration of historical documents, and more.Accordingly, in the context of the formation and reproduction of the historical memory of the Ukrainian people, the militaristic commemorative practices of World War II are divided into three groups, depending on the level of memory and the peculiarities of historical development. In particular, the first group is represented by local forms of militaristic commemoration, initiated by family members, friends and veterans themselves, who collectively represent a group’ collective memory of a war that proclaimed the nation’s reconciliation with its heritage, military losses through the expression of grief, and mourning (accounts for the 40-50s of the twentieth century); the second group is a commemorative practice, the creation of which was initiated by the central authorities (president, parliament, government) and contained a collective memory of war at the national level, which was accompanied by the heroization and symbolization of the Great Victory (in the 1960-1970’s); the third group is represented by sources of personal origin, capable of actualizing the representations of war on specific examples, there is a combination of elements of the previous groups (periods) when, together with the ideological onset of the state on social (historical) memory, the expansion of memory space into everyday life, there is an attempt to return personal memory, inherent in the early (post-war) period, when the emphasis is on sacrifice, not just on the heroization of the events of World War II.

scholarly journals The 1944 Warsaw Uprising

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-23
Author(s):  
Marianna Kmeťová ◽  
Marek Syrný
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
Ultimate Outcome ◽  
Post War ◽  
The City

After the German campaign at the beginning of World War II (1939), Poland was divided between nazi Germany which occupied the west and center of the country, and the Soviet Union which occupying the Eastern regions. The controversial relationship with Moscow has seen several diametrical breaks from a positive alliance after the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers in 1941, to a very critical relationship with the USSR after the revelation of the so-called Katyn massacre in 1943. With the approach of the Eastern Front to the frontiers of pre-war Poland, massive Polish Resistance was also activated to get rid of nazi domination and to restore of pre-war Poland. The neutralization of possible claims by the Soviets on the disputed eastern areas (Western Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania), respectively to prevent the crushing sovietization of Poland, it was also intended to serve a clear and world-wide resistance act in the sense of liberating at least Warsaw from the German occupation. This was to prevent the repeat of the situation in the east of the country, where the Red Army and the Soviet authorities overlooked the merits and interests of the Polish Resistance and Polish authorities. The contribution will therefore focus on the analysis of the causes, assumptions, course and consequences of the ultimate outcome of the unsuccessful efforts of the Armia Krajowa and the Warsaw inhabitants to liberate the city on their own and to determine the free post-war existence of the country.

scholarly journals Wars of Historical Memory (to the Statement of the Problem)

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
V. Tkachenko ◽  
V. Yakuba
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Red Army ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Washington University ◽  
Great Victory

The article is a study of historical memory wars. In particular, the director of the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies of the School of International Relations named after Elliott, George Washington University (Washington) Marlene Larwell most convexly and provocatively outlined the front of the wars of historical memory: “By identifying who can be labeled a ‘fascist’, we get the perfect Europe”. If Russia is fascist(that is, Putin’s regime can be typified as fascist or the Soviet past, which the Kremlin does not want to condemn, is equivalent to Nazism, as Central and Eastern European states claim), then Russia should be excluded from Europe. In addition, it was analyzed that politics continues to interfere with the interpretation of history, sowing antagonism between peoples. It has been found that “wars of historical memory” have become one of the important components of modern geopolitics, and as such they deserve to be the subject of a separate scientific study. Today, this is especially true to those pressing issues of history that flared up on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the problem has matured before, and now has simply entered the phase of “wars of historical memory”, there were anniversary events in Moscow in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory five years ago (2015). After Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, these celebrations took place without the presence of Western leaders. This was perceived by the Kremlin (or portrayed by him) as an insult and denial of the great victims of World War II – because they often write about the 27 million “Russians”who laid their lives on the altar of Victory. At the same time, the multinational composition of the Red Army is somehow not specified. And this approach does not improve mutual understanding between peoples. The article concludes that history, unfortunately, has become a political tool through which to legitimize or delegitimize a particular socio-political system.

Anti-Jewish Incidents in the Lublin Region in the Early Years after World War II

2008 ◽  
pp. 177-205
Author(s):  
Adam Kopciowski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish

In the early years following World War II, the Lublin region was one of the most important centres of Jewish life. At the same time, during 1944-1946 it was the scene of anti-Jewish incidents: from anti-Semitic propaganda, accusation of ritual murder, economic boycott, to cases of individual or collective murder. The wave of anti-Jewish that lasted until autumn of 1946 resulted in a lengthy and, no doubt incomplete, list of 118 murdered Jews. Escalating anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war years was one of the main factors, albeit not the only one, to affect the demography (mass emigration) and the socio-political condition of the Jewish population in the Lublin region

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